What do you guys think of this spec?

closeratio

closeratio

closeratio

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Gonna be buying this in a week or two and wondered what you guys through of it. I don't really want to be spending over £500 on it, anything less than that but with the same sort of specs would be aven better.

I'm going to be using the setup to be doing about 60% gaming and 40% work/surfing the net. Chances are I'll beplaying the latest games as well (Crysis, COD 4 etc.), and form the GPU i've specified, it soudns like a pretty good one.

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 'Energy Efficient 95W Edition' 153.99 184.94

Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) 69.99 82.24

OcUK ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512mb GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI 65.99 77.54

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-5400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) 33.99 39.94

Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache 41.99 49.34

NEC AD7170S Serial ATA 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter 15.99 18.79

Total 367.94 433.90
(Minus shipping)

I'm also going to get a case (A Tagan/Nanopoint APLUS Monolize 2) and a PSU (A Trust 520 Pro PSU) from another place which I won't name. These two come to just unser £50, and I don't really want ot be spending more than that on a psu and a case (even though i know I should :D). Chances are I might get most of this stuff from somewhere else, but I know OC are really reliable so I'll probably stick with them. I've read reviews on the case and it doesn't seem bad, and the PSU doesn't seem too bad.

I've stuck with some of the standard prices for some of the items are because knowing my luck, the offers won't be on anymore by the time I come to buy them (this only really applies to the CPU really).

I know you guys have mixed feelings about these quad-core CPU's and that most of the time they're not much different to the Core 2 Duo's. It's jusdt I want to be able to take advantage of the games which come out in the next few months which utilise multi-core CPU's. And seen as the amount of cores in a processor seems to be increasing every few minutes (:)), I thought I'd get one which won't become outdated in a few months.

I've also heard good things about the motherboards I've specced so I mean Apart form the rest, I don't really want to lose the motherboard, The CPU, or the GPU. The optical drive was the cheapest SATA one I could find, and Ideally I do want it to be a SATA drive because I'm going to use an old IDE hard drive on the IDE cable, and I don't want the DVD drive slowing it up at all.

What do you guys think anyway? I mean I wouldn't mind knowing what you'd reccommend even if you went for maybe a different Motherboard/GPU/CPU. I just don't want anything too different than that (more or less 2GB Ram, 320GB Hard drive, Mid-Range graphics card, quad core processor, half decent mobo).

Thanks anyway lads
 
Cr0fty said:
Seconded!

The price of the E6750 should be tempting

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.66GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
£104.99
£123.36 inc VAT

And an 8800GTS or 2900Pro
Whichever flavour you prefer ;)
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2900pro is your best bet. at the res you stated you're gonna struggle to play crysis at high settings on an x1950.
 
I see what you're saying, and I have considered it. And I mean an 8800 gts would be pretty darn good. But do you think there's a big difference performance-wise between the E6750 and the Q6600?
 
closeratio;I'm also going to get a case (A Tagan/Nanopoint APLUS Monolize 2) and a PSU (A Trust 520 Pro PSU) from another place which I won't name. These two come to just unser £50 said:
It is very foolish to buy a budget psu. The psu is argueably the most important component in a pc. Buy a cheapo one and if it fails it can take out some of your other components. You are far better off buying a quality one in the first place. If you really can't afford to buy a quality one then ditch the quad and get something like a dual core 2180 and clock it. If you are only gaming and surfing the net then you won't notice any differance anyway. Trust me, i have just made the move myself from a E4300 @3.4ghz to a quad Q6600 G0 clocked to 3.2ghz. Absolutely no difference at all! Put the money you will save towards a decent psu and a better graphics card.

That case is really ugly and you can get a much better one than that for around the same price. Cheapest i have seen that Aplus Monolize is £69.99. That's Antec 900 territory.
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closeratio said:
I see what you're saying, and I have considered it. And I mean an 8800 gts would be pretty darn good. But do you think there's a big difference performance-wise between the E6750 and the Q6600?
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the e6750 beats the q6600 in most games, because hardly any support quad core anyway.
 
pastymuncher said:
It is very foolish to buy a budget psu. The psu is argueably the most important component in a pc. Buy a cheapo one and if it fails it can take out some of your other components. You are far better off buying a quality one in the first place. If you really can't afford to buy a quality one then ditch the quad and get something like a dual core 2180 and clock it. If you are only gaming and surfing the net then you won't notice any differance anyway. Trust me, i have just made the move myself from a E4300 @3.4ghz to a quad Q6600 G0 clocked to 3.2ghz. Absolutely no difference at all! Put the money you will save towards a decent psu and a better graphics card.

That case is really ugly and you can get a much better one than that for around the same price. Cheapest i have seen that Aplus Monolize is £69.99. That's Antec 900 territory.
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I see what you mean. I guess I wouldn't see too much difference between a Q6600 and an E6750, and like yantorsen said, there isn't really much support for them at the moment.

Ok then guys, so if I got all my stuff from OcUK (which was probably the way to go from the start lol), and instead of a Q6600 I got an E6750. And as well of that with the spare funds I got the cheapest 8800 gts on here, as well as an Akasa Zen (AK-ZEN-01-BK Zen Black Case) and an OcUK Huntkey 450W PSU (which would pretty much add up to £60, which isn't too bad), dya reckon that'd be a better idea?

Thanks for all your help btw
 
I would say even the 6750 is a waste of money. Better off getting a 2180 for less than half the price and clocking it. Should easily reach 3ghz and the only thing it would be missing is the extra 2mb L2 cache.
 
pastymuncher said:
I would say even the 6750 is a waste of money. Better off getting a 2180 for less than half the price and clocking it. Should easily reach 3ghz and the only thing it would be missing is the extra 2mb L2 cache.
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I hear what you're sayin, but I don't want to have to go into clocking it too much, because I've always got that thought in the back of my mind that I might break somethin lol. I've heard that mobo does have some pretty decent overclocking options in the BIOS.

Well how about If I got an E6550, and clocked it to maybe the E6750 sort of speed? I don't want to be clocking it to more than 30% of what it came with really.
 
pastymuncher said:
That case is not brilliant either. You need a case that has half decent cooling. If it has to be cheap then something like the Coolermaster Centurion 5 can be had for around £30.
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Yeah I'd been looking at that a while ago and from the reviews I'd seen it doesn't look half bad. It's just a shame they don't sell it on Oc otherwise I would have definiately had that one.

What about the Thermaltake Mambo anyone?
 
closeratio said:
I hear what you're sayin, but I don't want to have to go into clocking it too much, because I've always got that thought in the back of my mind that I might break somethin lol. I've heard that mobo does have some pretty decent overclocking options in the BIOS.

Well how about If I got an E6550, and clocked it to maybe the E6750 sort of speed? I don't want to be clocking it to more than 30% of what it came with really.
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It's only £12 cheaper than the 6750. ;) Clocking is easy and providing you have decent cooling you will be ok. There's plenty of guys on here that will help. The 2180 is a fantastic cpu at an amazing price. There are some guys on here with them who have had spectacular results.

That mobo is a decent clocker too.

The Mambo's out of stock by the way. Try shopping around.
 
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pastymuncher said:
It's only £12 cheaper than the 6750. ;) Clocking is easy and providing you have decent cooling you will be ok. There's plenty of guys on here that will help. The 2180 is a fantastic cpu at an amazing price. There are some guys on here with them who have had spectacular results.
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I know, it's only like £50 :) The other thing is, I saw the FSB speed is only 800Mhz, and the 6750's 1333Mhz, which I guess is almost twice as fast. I've not read that much into clocking, but is it any harder to increase the FSB speed than it is to increase the multiplier?

And would you say the mambo's a better case for cooling than the Zen?
 
closeratio said:
I know, it's only like £50 :) The other thing is, I saw the FSB speed is only 800Mhz, and the 6750's 1333Mhz, which I guess is almost twice as fast. I've not read that much into clocking, but is it any harder to increase the FSB speed than it is to increase the multiplier?

And would you say the mambo's a better case for cooling than the Zen?
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You can't increase the multiplier as they are factory set. That means you can only increase the fsb. As the 6750 is a 2.66ghz (8x333mhz) 1333mhz fsb chip it is nearer it's maximum speed from the start. By the time you clock the 2180 with it's 10x multiplier to 3ghz, you will be up to 1200mhz (quad pumped fsb 4x300mhz) fsb anyway. Have a look at this thread to see what the 2180 can do.

The Mambo is better than the Zen but you can get an Antec NSK 4000 which is much better looking and better built for £28.
 
OK I see what you mean, and that thread looks like it has some pretty interestin information. I'm just glad you can clock it using software rather than having to change the voltage manually. So I just redid my cart on the Oc site and instead of a E6750 I used an E2180. I also got an Akasa cooler (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-031-AK) and some thermal paste (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=AC-000-AC) because i'm guessing that'll be better cooling for the CPU than the stock one will be. Especially if I intend to overclock it. I used the Mambo as well only because, in my opinion, the Mambo looks better than the NSK.

I also got an 8800gts like everybody's reccommending (I prefer NVidia to Ati, not necessarily because i believe they're better, just because i've always used them). And the rest of the bits were the same, and it came to about £520 including postage.

Do you think that's a good spec? And maybe if I shopped around a bit or waited a few weeks so the price dropped below £500 that it'd be good enough?

Thanks
 
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closeratio said:
I know, it's only like £50 :) The other thing is, I saw the FSB speed is only 800Mhz, and the 6750's 1333Mhz, which I guess is almost twice as fast. I've not read that much into clocking, but is it any harder to increase the FSB speed than it is to increase the multiplier?

And would you say the mambo's a better case for cooling than the Zen?
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I have a zen, it's a great little case, good cooling, and very very quiet, from the near silent akasa case fans.

it looks much better in the flesh than it does in pics too.
 
yantorsen said:
I have a zen, it's a great little case, good cooling, and very very quiet, from the near silent akasa case fans.

it looks much better in the flesh than it does in pics too.
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Yeah I've seen quite a few pics of it and I can imagine it does look nicer when you see it 'in person'.

I see it also comes with two fans as well, which is kinda nice :D
 
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